1. Technical Field
The embodiments described herein relate to document information leakage, authentication and anti-counterfeiting, and more particularly to the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to ensure that documents are authentic and cannot be copied without permission.
2. Related Art
There are several known techniques for ensuring the authenticity and preventing anti-counterfeiting of various documents. For example, special inks, holographs, special papers, etc., have been used to ensure that documents are authentic and cannot be counterfeited.
Digital signature schemes have also been developed in order to increase the security of important documents. A digital signature scheme is a type of asymmetric cryptography used to simulate the security properties of a signature in digital rather than written form. A digital signature scheme normally has two algorithms, one for signing, which involves the use of a secret or private key, and one for verifying the digital signature, which involves the use of a public key. It is the output of the signing algorithm using the private key that is referred to as the digital signature. Thus, digital signatures can be used to authenticate the associated input (i.e., message) to the signing algorithm. The message can be anything from an electronic document, an email, digitize-able characteristics of physical object or a physical contract or document.
A digital certificate can contain the sender's public key as well as other information. The digital certificate and digital signature can both be transmitted to a receiver so that the receiver can verify the signature using the sender's public key. In a conventional public key infrastructure, there is a Certificate Authority (CA) to issue, distribute, and authenticate digital certificates so that senders and receivers can rely on the CA.